Top five health scams of 2008

It’s the time of year when annual “top” lists begin appearing everywhere like so many ornaments on the tree. So here’s Dr. Z’s roundup of the top five health scams of 2008:

Kinoki Detox Foot Pads

Kinoki and all other so-called detox foot pads top the list because of the sheer audacity involved in their shameless marketing and the utter lack of either a scientific basis through which they might work or any medical studies proving that they do. Yet we’ve received over 400 comments on my blog about them, attesting to the surprising interest people have in these worthless products. Despite their having been debunked on National Public Radio and the ABC news program “20/20″ inquiring minds still want to know, likely due to relentless marketing and widespread distribution. Users of these pads seem quite impressed that they turn brown or black after being worn overnight and assume they are now loaded with toxins that have been magically sucked out through their feet. Turns out, however, that simply exposing the pads to water causes them to change color and when the used pads are tested they contain no toxins. Read my blog for the full story, but don’t fall for this scam.

Flat Belly Diet

Next up is the Flat Belly Diet, which is a scam because its cynical creators know full well that it’s just the diet du jour and that no matter how carefully you follow it you won’t magically obtain a flat belly. As I wrote in my blog on the Flat Belly Diet this is nothing more than your basic overpriced diet book recommending calorie counting and calorie restriction (1600 calories a day). The authors assert that no exercise is necessary but then recommend that you do exercise in a classic bait and switch. The one novel idea they have is the requirement that you eat a MUFA- (mono-unsaturated fatty acid) containing food at every meal (nuts, certain oils and seeds, olives, avocados and dark chocolate). This would be akin to eating a Mediterranean diet, which would be great for your health but is impractical here in the U.S. Besides, while you might lose some weight if you did reduce your caloric intake, without exercise you won’t flatten your tummy. My advice is don’t buy this or any other diet book, rather, just eat a little bit less and exercise a little bit more. Repeat as long and as often as necessary.

CT Angiography

CT angiography comes in at number three this year. As I mentioned in my blog this is a technology in search of a use, which means that it’s an expensive piece of equipment that produces incredible images, but it has no real diagnostic utility for which it can be recommended. It is used unnecessarily in people who have no symptoms of coronary artery disease but who are either so worried that they convince their doctor to order the test or their doctor convinces them that it’d be a good idea if they had it (usually meaning it’d be good for the doctor since his or her practice owns or leases the machine and they profit from its use). Later in the year, a study came out showing that for people who did have symptoms of coronary artery disease CT angiography was less accurate than the traditional procedure called coronary angiography. I wrote about that study in a follow-up blog. The problem with CT angiography, aside from its cost, is the radiation exposure it causes. One study estimated that 1.5 – 2 percent of all cancers in the U.S. are caused by CT scans alone. As I said in the blog, CT scans should only be used when they are clearly indicated to be the best diagnostic test available.

Pristiq and Treximet

Two drugs were approved by the FDA this year in spite of their being obvious scams. They are scams not because they don’t work, which they do, but because they are entirely unnecessary and are simply attempts by their marketers to avoid generic competition. The products are Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) for depression and Treximet (sumatriptan and naproxen) for migraine headache. Pristiq is Wyeth’s attempt to avoid generic competition for their blockbuster product called Effexor (venlafaxine), which went off-patent not long ago and saw its sales eroded by cheaper generics. Pristiq is nothing more than the active metabolite of Effexor, which means that when one takes Effexor, the body first changes it to something that has antidepressant activity and that chemical is what is in Pristiq. If you’re paying top dollar for Pristiq, you could get the same effect from generic venlafaxine. Treximet is Glaxo’s defense against generic competition for Imitrex, their innovative migraine treatment. Treximet combines the same drug that’s in Imitrex, which is called sumatriptan, and the anti-inflammatory drug naproxen (the same as what’s in Aleve). This is a great idea and it’s been shown that combining sumatriptan with naproxen is more effective against migraines than sumatriptan alone. The reason this is a scam is that Treximet is expensive but you could just as easily buy generic sumatriptan at a fraction of the price and combine it yourself with generic naproxen, which is available everywhere at extremely low cost. Why pay top dollar for branded products when cheaper generics are readily available?

Master Cleanse

With so many scams to choose from it’s hard to pick number five. After all, there’s Demi Moore and her leeches, homeopathy, and even water, but I’ll have to go with my perennial favorite the Master Cleanse program, which, as I wrote in my 2008 blog, is still crazy after all these years. You may know Master Cleanse as the lemonade diet or the maple syrup diet or you may know it as a detoxification or colon cleanse. What you do in either case is fast (eat no food) for 10 or more days while drinking copious amounts of a mixture of water, grade B maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. As a diet it works in the short run due to extreme calorie restriction (the only calories come from maple syrup) but not in the long run because any weight lost is quickly regained when you resume your normal eating patterns. As a cleanse it is wholly unnecessary because your colon doesn’t need cleansing! It’s a constantly self-cleaning system not a septic tank. The colon doesn’t store toxins, it eliminates them daily as everyone knows. If you did have toxins stored in your body they’d likely be in your fat deposits and therefore unaffected by whatever tortures you put your colon through. If you want to change your diet, eat better, eliminate junk food, lose weight and exercise more, by all means do so – it’s a great idea. No need, however, first to go through a fast, a cleanse or any other form of detoxification regime – those are just wastes of time, money and effort.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ed Zimney, MD

Ed is a physician with more than 30 years of experience. He’s held positions in drug advertising review, drug safety surveillance, medical information and marketing with several bio/pharmaceutical companies.

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